By: Jy Hung Ong
Ukraine’s Alpha Division is using virtual reality to command drones to crash deep in Russian territory.
Last year, the only way to take out targets in enemy territory was to sneak in during night. Now, UAVs heavily equipped with bombs attack during daylight instead.
Last month, three soldiers manually directed a drone to hit antennas on top of a tower in Polohy, a town in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region. They were using the antennas to confuse and disrupt Ukrainian satellite rockets away from their targets.
The UAV, which was made of a Styrofoam-like material and cost over $1,500, crashed into one of the antennas, instantly destroying it. Now, with the Russian ability to interrupt missiles gone, Ukrainians destroyed the tower with a US-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. The rocket rammed into the building with a precision the Ukrainian military has come to rely on during the 17-month battle to remove Russian occupiers. However, if the drone had not demolished the antenna, the HIMARS would most likely have missed.
In an article for The Washington Post, the authors wrote, “That sort of operation has become a trademark of special forces units such as the Security Service of Ukraine’s ‘A,’ or Alpha, division, which recently granted Washington Post journalists rare access to their teams assisting regular military brigades in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which now stretches across the country’s southeast.”
The Ukrainian war — fought mainly with artillery with the two sides separated by incredibly dense mined fields — has forced many traditional special operators to slowly shift from covert methods generally used at the early stages of the war. Now, 17 months in, they have switched from covert methods to technology, including a massive arsenal of self-destructing drones.
The drones are like kamikaze planes used by the Japanese in World War II (kamikaze planes are planes full of bombs crashed into ships with a pilot inside), except now the drones’ pilots direct the drone many miles away. This operation has a much better risk-to-reward ratio than outright trying to sneak into Russian territory.
“What is the problem with going behind enemy lines? Total mining. It’s almost impossible to go somewhere secretly. You have to use some kind of demining equipment. This means you will already be identified,” Oleh, the first deputy of the Alpha forces, said. Like others in this article, he asked to be known only by his first name.
The Alpha forces are seen as a beacon of hope for the troops involved in Ukraine’s counteroffensive, with limited advances that were hard gained as the Russians have strengthened their defenses over many months. These soldiers are trained in almost everything, from firing antitank missiles to operating mobile air-defense systems. Their snipers are one of the best Ukraine has to offer. However, in the end, all attention turns to drones as the Russian targets get harder and harder to reach.
The Alpha fighters illustrate challenges mirrored across the Ukrainian forces as it tries to attack a Russia that has learned and adjusted from previous mishaps earlier in the war when Ukraine managed to recapture massive areas of territory in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
According to The Washington Post, “The eastern front line, near the besieged city of Bakhmut, is less mined than the wide fields of the southern Zaporizhzhia region. But it is still hard to get close to the Russians. Recently, a team of Oleh’s fighters had “a relatively shallow entry” into enemy turf near there and 14 of them were wounded, he said.”
However, even though 14 people might seem like a little, with the resources Ukraine has, every person counts.
“And with our resources, the loss of 14 people is a huge loss for us,” Oleh said. “Are our losses appropriate in these conditions and are they justified? I cannot use these 14 people in other operations soon.”